Daniel Grimmett, CEO

Our mission.

Since the beginning, my mission with The Songwriting Team has been to connect the best up-and-coming talent with musicians and brands who desire an affordable, high quality, and collaborative experience. Because of the internet we are no longer bound by territory. This opens up an entirely new world of music creation. This allows me to really find the best fit for our clients and enables me employ independent creators all over the globe.

I look forward to putting together your next creative team and offering the best guidance to help you reach your goals.

Community

Collaboration

Because there is creative strength in numbers

Est. 2012

The Full Story.

The Beginnings. I started playing music at a young age. Both of my parents we’re amateur musicians so there were always instruments around. I grew up listening to their classic records and was exposed to great music. In middle school I started playing in bands and that lasted into my early twenties. I got into recording music because well, we couldn’t afford to record in a studio! After high school I spent 5 years going back and forth between recording music full time and working in sales/marketing for small businesses. In 2010, I met a studio owner who would end up being my mentor. The studio was called Old House Studio and it was nestled right outside of my home town of Charlotte, N.C. I spent the majority of 2010 working there and learning as much as I could. I wasn’t able to make it happen full time and went back to the corporate world from 2011 to early 2012. But, working at Old House inspired me to try again and make a career in music. I left my posh senior marketing position and on a whim moved to Los Angeles. I arrived there and was ready for my big studio gig! And… That gig never happened, but it ended up being a good thing. The big studios weren’t doing so hot at that time yet I noticed that there were a ton of entrepreneurial independent producers doing their own thing. It was at that moment I chose my path. I had a business background and loved music so I figured it be worth a shot! I also didn’t have many other options so I was determined to make it work.

Los Angeles (2012 – 2014). I rented a small 1-room apartment in Hollywood that could pass as a recording studio as long as I didn’t have a bed in there. I didn’t have a bed at all my first year in business. The room had vibe. The building was constructed in 1918 and at some point was used by Paramount Pictures as a hotel for actors. I started recording local songwriters and eventually they started asking me to make tracks for them. It was my first time ever doing that. They wanted a one stop shop. I figured if this was a relevant need in Hollywood than it would be a need in other places too! Since my background was in web marketing I decided to bring my business online so I created SongwritingTeam.com. In the first year I got to work with dozens of clients on over 100 projects. It was the first time that I was collaborating with clients online from all over the world. It was crazy! I like to say that it was a happy accident. 12 months after starting the business, SongwritingTeam.com was one of the biggest online demo companies on the internet with dozens of Google rankings and new projects coming in every week. I was finally able to upgrade and get a bigger studio in the same building on the top floor. After a while it started to become overwhelming. I was at a fork in the road. I didn’t want to just be an online demo company anymore. I wanted to build a team of talent with a more hands on approach to all aspects of the music process including production, songwriting, publishing, etc.

Freelancer To Company (2014 – 2016). In early 2014 I met Christian Fiore through a friend of mine. Christian was a Berklee student and I was impressed by his chops. Again, on a whim I decided to partner up with him and we relocated to Nashville. We chose Nashville for a few reasons: 1) The property is cheap 2) It was halfway between where we were both living and 3) There’s great music there. In June of 2014 we opened our first Nashville studio. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. I had never partnered with anyone before, but I am a big strength in numbers kind of guy. It was tough financially at first, but Christian increased the quality of our work in a huge way. It wasn’t before long that we were doing three times the amount of work that I was doing back in Los Angeles. We were (and still are) loving Nashville. At this point we we’re still all web-based but soon we’d be working with a ton of incredible local talent too… 2015 was a game changer for us. It was the first year that it actually hit me… This is real. By this time my focus had shifted over to primarily running the company while Christian handled the creative side. As independent producers we knew that we had to make a big push and explore new territory if we wanted to grow this thing even bigger! A lot of exciting things both business-wise and creative-wise happened in 2015. We signed with a wonderful sync licensing agent and got our first placement with ABC. We started an instrumental market place called Anthemize.com. During this period The Songwriting Team acquired and built new companies such as Woodshed Audio (A drum sample market place) and Make Pop Music (a community for pop music creators).

Expansion (2017). Although 2017 proved to be one of our most challenging years as a business… We’re glad it was! It inspired us to create a new business model that allows us to help more people and make more music. Instead of keeping all of our projects in-house, we created a way for anyone to apply to work on our team per project basis. This enables us to support more creators financially while allowing us to offer our clients a larger pool of talent.

Now that you’ve read our story… we are looking to be a part of your story!